


Sun-dried

by sloppy



Series: Tin, Straw, and Fur [2]
Category: Captain Marvel (DC), DCU (Comics), Shazam (Comics)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 21:10:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppy/pseuds/sloppy
Summary: The fence gives after a single push. Billy holds the rusted gate open, and Freddy, slow and resentful, takes one step at a time, beaten sneakers crushing dirt mounds underfoot. A full week with these crutches and Freddy has yet to grow any love for them. He probably never will. Billy keeps saying it’s better than a wheelchair or a hospital cot, and it would have been an easily won argument if there didn’t exist a single name that blew it all out of the water.





	Sun-dried

The fence gives after a single push. Billy holds the rusted gate open, and Freddy, slow and resentful, takes one step at a time, beaten sneakers crushing dirt mounds underfoot. A full week with these crutches and Freddy has yet to grow any love for them. He probably never will. Billy keeps saying it’s better than a wheelchair or a hospital cot, and it would have been an easily won argument if there didn’t exist a single name that blew it all out of the water.

It’s been a while since Freddy’s been somewhere like this, somewhere clouds pedaled over the hills with snail-speed, a cluster of shadowy aches over the mildew pastures home to most midwestern counties. Fairfield is like Fawcett in the way of their surroundings, blankly serene as the people that reside here. This particular spot is a beaten path above a freeway, though with the silence it’s impossible to tell. 

To someone who doesn't know any better, they are simple boys on a hike, looking for trouble or running from it. A month ago that could have been true, but Freddy has added flying to his repertoire of skills among other things, and honing that required space. Plenty of it and none to spare. He hasn’t thought himself a simple boy for that long.

Despite October rearing its cool nose, the summer sun still clings to this part of town, a steady, noticeable warmth that makes Freddy wear cotton instead of leather and hate the hideous sight of Billy in his signature pullover, fraying at the collar. He gripes about how the red in this state is blinding, that he will be sightless along with his many handicaps, and Billy deals with it by stripping to his undershirt, tying the sweater around his waist. Watching him cooled Freddy down by full degrees.

Billy is leading them up a rocky plateau, outstretching a hand when he sees Freddy struggle, when it hits him all in one moment, a single bullet of hurt: in this body, he will never be able to do anything like this without help ever again. Freddy doesn’t take his hand. He goes up slowly, independent. Billy takes no offense and waits for him, his undershirt billowing with a whipping breeze. A triangle of skin suddenly peeks out from beneath the hem and Freddy buries his embarrassment with conversation.

“How much longer?” Freddy asks once he’s reached the top. “I don’t think my training wheels are multi-terrain.”

Billy licks his chapped lips. The sun continues its unrelenting shine above. “See those trees?” He points in the distance to tall twin pines with yellowing leaves. “Just beyond them, there’s a big, plain meadow. No one’ll see us for miles, and it’s not in line with any plane routes.”

“You know this because?”

“My sister told me about it. She used to come here when she was little.” Mary Marvel, who is really Mary Bromfield, who is really Billy’s lost-and-found sister Mary Batson. Freddy had been updated with the abridged story and filled-in most of the blanks himself. In person, the girl is harder to pin down. He has a feeling she likes it that way.

They reach the destination—Billy walking, Freddy hobbling. The second he lands his crutches amongst the ryegrass, a lungful of air escapes him in honest relief. Without speaking, Billy gestures to the sky, a means of saying, _Go for it_.

Flying is not anything like riding a plane, driving a fast car, or even dreaming. Flying as a Marvel is more like being a kite, thrown high up in the air and being pushed along the current, and for a while you’d forget about the string tied to your ankle till the second it tugged. Most of the time the string is nylon, featherlight, and the drafts that rake your underbelly act as a supporting force. It hasn’t happened to Freddy yet, but Billy warns it could sometimes get steely, which frightens him. As indifferent as he is on heights, falling hundreds of meters down to the depths of earth is terrific no matter any fear. Even then, he tries to milk as much enjoyment as he can, while he can.

Freddy does loop-de-loops for a half hour. He chases a band of jaybirds migrating north who are unbothered by his presence and he caws like he’s one with the flock. When Billy had suggested he practiced his maneuvering, Freddy was under the impression Billy would join him in the clouds. Instead, the boy with his sleeveless undershirt and freckled, sunburnt shoulders sits at the base of one of the balding pines, watching Freddy fly like he’s at his own private airshow. Each time Freddy glances down, Billy’s smile grows wider than he’s already been smiling, happy just because Freddy is.

 

* * *

 

Cissie Sommerly hosts her fourteenth birthday party at her house in Fawcett. Once her parents retire early upstairs, the birthday girl scoops out her daddy’s empty beer bottle from the recycling bin, places it in the middle of the carpet where ten eighth graders camp in a circle, and exclaims with gusto: “Spin-the-bottle-seven-minutes-in-heaven!”

Freddy cackles, and though he tries not to sound too cruel, he’s still the only one laughing. Cissie’s had a crush on Billy since last semester when he lent her the only pencil he had during an Algebra quiz. She thought he’d been so noble. The truth was that he’d been in New York the night before and hadn’t found any time to study in-between mashing villains to a pulp, so he’d counted his chickens before they hatched. Freddy’s had to suffer through her flailing since, though Billy has begun to blush at her attentions more and more.

Ignoring Freddy (an act she’s particularly gifted at), Mary corrects in utmost sincerity, “Cissie, sweetheart, aren’t those two different games?”

“I’ve combined them so that the person who spins the bottle and the one who it lands on both _do_ Seven Minutes!” she explains. “Isn’t that clever?”

Freddy rather thought it stupid, but in the end, the majority chimes in with their approval. After fourteen minutes of Chad and Mitski and Tamika and Sonja, Cissie directs that it’s Freddy’s turn to spin. A part of him wants to pass altogether, make a small, yet charming deal of it as one does, except what stops him in his tracks is the lightning gaze of the boy who’s been quiet all evening, a small grin beginning to cake his mouth in a way that was less than innocent.

Billy thinks it’s funny. Billy thinks whatever’ll happen will be funny. I’ll show you funny, says the voice in Freddy’s head, unreasonably spiteful. If it lands on you, let’s see you laugh then.

He takes the bottle, spins it. The bottle slows to a stop. Freddy had been right about one thing; Billy doesn’t think it so funny anymore.

“I’m not going with him,” Mary protests calmly over Cissie’s squealing. She upturns her nose in an imperceptibly ladylike way that only Freddy seems to catch.

“She’s not going with _him!_ ” repeats Billy in a panic. He’d been sitting next to Mary, and Freddy can’t help but be in awe that five inches more would have spearheaded a completely different argument.

“It’s the rules,” says Chad, who didn’t seem to have a problem making a fuss before being forced into the closet himself just moments ago. He and Mitski haven’t stopped sneaking glances since. “Can’t break the rules.”

“Freeman,” Billy calls out just as Freddy reaches for his crutches to stand. He doesn’t say anything else, so Freddy has no idea what he means by it. A warning, maybe. A plea—not likely.

“Best behavior,” Freddy promises. He says it mainly to comfort him, but it comes out goading, and Billy’s expression sours. The cakey grin has gone. 

Cissie shoos them into her family’s coat closet by the front door, and Freddy is glad for his lack of claustrophobia. There’s probably only a foot or so distance between Mary and him, and that’s with both their backs flat against the opposing walls. The door creaks to a close, clock undoubtedly tick-tocking, and Freddy Freeman’s all alone in the dark with no one but Mary Bromfield-Batson for company.

The problem isn’t that Mary is unattractive. She buttons her cardigans to the very top of her collar and wears skirts an inch bellow her knee, and she is kind and sweet and everyone’s idol. But the difference between Freddy and her swarm of admirers is that he knows the single, hidden secret that she manages to hide so well: Mary, for all her posturing, doesn’t actually… care. She doesn’t care about anything or anyone, excluding, perhaps, her genuinely cherished twin brother. But aside from Billy, who is equally clueless of this particular quirk as the others, Mary is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, breeding trust and adoration in places she sought to conquer with her bake sales and rosy cheeks, all for ulterior motives Freddy cannot even begin to fathom. The Mary she chooses to be now with a boy she doesn’t deem worthy of her professional front is Freddy’s least favorite version.

“You’re breathing too loud,” she complains, a finger twisting around a curl as if she was saying something timid rather than harsh. “Stay on your side.”

“I haven’t moved,” he says tersely.

“Don’t come near,” she commands him.

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say to a cripple.”

“You really call yourself that?” If it had been Other-Mary, this would have been the moment she chided, almost gently, that that was no way to address yourself. The Mary now only sounds curious, chit-chatting for boredom’s sake, and for some reason it’s this comment that loosens him.

“I was kidding.”

A silence blankets them for a few more seconds, and Freddy hates to think they’ve been in here for only less than three minutes. He wonders how Billy is faring, and as he does, Mary speaks again.

“Are you upset I’m not him?”

“Wha—” The dark obscures all but her profile, and to stare at her would be to stare at nothing. Freddy clears his throat. “What’re you talking about?”

“Oh,” Mary says, sounding impossibly gleeful. “Oh, never mind.”

She knows. She has to have known for a while. How? What gave him away? What did he do that made it so obvious? His heart rate quickens. Freddy can’t keep it together in time. He blurts out, “Don’t tell him.”

All she does is hum. “Tell who what?”

“I’m serious, Mary.” Suddenly the closet feels tighter than it did before. He paws at his shirt, feeling stuffed. The released crutch leans on the doorframe. “It’s not a joke.”

“To be honest,” she says, disregarding his worry, “your little schoolyard crush means nothing to me. It’s not my business—or, that’s what I _would_ say if the person you were going googly-eyed over wasn’t my brother. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.”

“Is nothing an option?” It’s common knowledge Billy’s overprotectiveness for his sister knows no bounds; that his sister shares the same trait shouldn’t be so surprising.

“One of many.” For a second, it seems like she’s moving closer, and then she actually is right in front of him, diminishing the space. Her eyes are colored like Billy's, but the difference in their intent is clear. He can make out her face in the shadows, examining him as a predator regarding its prey. Her following words are experimental, not flirtatious. “Would you kiss me if I asked, Freddy?”

He takes a good look at her, hair in a loose braid with tousled flyaway hairs, cupid’s bow in that perfect arch. “You wouldn’t ask.”

“And if this is me asking?”

“It isn’t.”

Mary tilts her head. “I don’t hate you, Junior.”

The name is an unexpected jab, the determining crack in the shattered glass. He shifts his weight and spreads his palm against the wall behind her, crowding her in. Moments pass and he’s pressing his lips to hers, an action driven on proving a point. Her arms loop around his neck instantly, and then they are teenagers in a closet on borrowed time, body heat rising and rising until they are a single fluttering flame. Freddy realizes he doesn’t quite hate her, either.

Because Mary is never caught off guard in any circumstance, they unhinge mere seconds before the door is swung open. It does nothing, however, to hide their fussed appearances. Cissie and the kids howl their utterances. Freddy doesn’t do them a favor by playing the blushing bride.

He shouldn’t, he has no right, but he can’t help taking a peek. Billy doesn’t show his face to Freddy, just absentmindedly hands a cup of punch to Mary as she comes to sit at her place beside him. Then, in a voice loud enough to carry onto the rest, Billy says, “Let’s go. I’ll spin.”

The next seven minutes take its toll on Freddy’s sanity, and Billy comes out, beaming brightly, his grip tight around Cissie’s wrist.

**Author's Note:**

> Come contact me through [tumblr](http://marybatson.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
